B-Schools With The Most Women, Minority & First-Generation Students

Sacred Heart University’s  Jack Welch College of Business and Technology enrolled an incoming class that was 62% female, the highest percentage of our 2024 ranking. Courtesy photo

In our annual ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Schools, we at Poets&Quants take great pains to consider a wide range of metrics that get to the heart of what a well-rounded business education is made of.

That includes four metrics measuring the make-up of the student body – the young men and women who will sit in the classroom alongside prospective students. These metrics include the percentages of first-generation college students, underrepresented minorities, international students, and women of the fall 2023 incoming class. Schools report these percentages as part of our extensive data-collection process, and we average these four percentages together to calculate a school’s diversity average for our final ranking. That average accounts for 15% of the school’s Admission Standards score which, in turn, accounts for 33% over the final rank score. (See a full explanation of our methodology here.)

B-SCHOOLS WITH THE MOST WOMEN STUDENTS

Attracting more women is often a stated goal of many top business schools and their associated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But, despite business schools’ lofty goals for gender parity, results are mixed.

Sacred Heart University’s Jack Welch College of Business and Technology excels in attracting women business majors. It has enrolled a higher percentage of women than any other ranked business school for the last three admission cycles. Of 667 incoming business majors in Fall 2023, 62% of them were female. Some 67.4% were female in 2022 and 66.2% in 2021.

At Sacred Heart – based in Fairfield, Connecticut – the College of Business includes the School of Computer Science & Engineering allowing it to better integrate technology in every business major curriculum. A few years ago, the B-school moved into the formal global headquarters for General Electric and created an Innovation Campus that includes state-of-the-art resources like an artificial intelligence lab, augmented reality lab, IDEA Lab, and an iHub co-working space.

University of Akron’s College of Business Administration in Ohio enrolled the second highest percentage of women at 61.82%. That’s a 28.39% increase from the 33.43% female class it enrolled in 2022, the biggest increase in enrolled women of the 91 schools ranked this year.

BUSINESS SCHOOLS WITH THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN

In Fall 2023, just 16 of 91 ranked schools enrolled at least as many women as men in their incoming business classes compared to 15 schools the year before.

Only one Top 10 school from this year’s raking enrolled more women: University of Southern California Marshall School of Business at 53%. It’s the third straight year the school has hit gender parity in its freshman class, achieving it for the first time in Fall 2021. That class, which is 51.4% women, will graduate in 2025, reaching a goal set by Marshall Dean Geoff Garrett.

“Women are essential to fulfilling the unlimited potential and unprecedented responsibility that businesses face in the future,” Garrett said at the time. “Gender parity in the undergraduate program represents a real milestone on our path to giving women access to the skills, network and opportunities they need to realize their highest aspirations as business leaders.”

On the other end of the spectrum, two business schools enrolled classes with just 20% women and eight schools enrolled fewer than 35% women. Worcester Polytechnic Institute reported the largest drop in female enrollment from 32% in fall 2022 to 20% in fall 2023.

Across all 91 ranked business schools, an average 43.61% of incoming business majors in 2023 were women. That’s up just slightly from the average 43.39% of women enrolled the year before.

BUSINESS SCHOOLS WITH THE LOWEST PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN STUDENTS

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